ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 argues that the Saudi construction of the Houthis as posing an existential threat is a product of the Saudi regime’s new survival strategy post-Arab Spring. That is, the new Saudi leadership has staked claims to rule without ideological cover of Islamic authority and has, in its place, chosen to stake Saudi regime legitimacy primarily through constructing external enemies as existential threats. In this chapter I show two main points: (1) how the sources of insecurity in Chapter 4 resulted in an aggressive approach to foreign policy beginning in 2011; and (2) how manipulation of the regime’s sense of ontological insecurity facilitated changes in leadership beginning in 2015, ultimately exacerbating an earlier trend of increased aggression. I provide an overview of Saudi threat perception from Iran, followed by a brief overview of the background on the Houthis as a militant movement from 2004–2010. I then trace how the Saudi decision to lead an overt military intervention in Yemen in 2015 is a disproportionate response that can only fully be explained by understanding domestic politics of ontological insecurity that have led the regime towards a belligerent nationalism on its trajectory of new state-building.
